Week of March 3, 2009
For the seventh year in a row, the environmental community will prepare weekly Hot Lists detailing positions on no more than ten of the highest priority issues being considered that week in the House and Senate.
If you are interested in receiving pdf version of the hotlist by Monday morning of each week, please email sudha (at) wcvoters.org.
SENATE FLOOR ACTION
SSB 5840: Modifying the energy independence act.
POSITION: OPPOSE
•In its current form, the bill severely weakens I-937, the Clean Energy Act, by including current provisions capping development at load growth, grandfathering in existing resources to count as eligible renewables, and allowing conservation to substitute for renewable resources. Such amendments essentially eliminate all of the new renewables that would have been produced through the citizens initiative.
•The environmental community looks forward to continuing to work with stakeholders and the Prime Sponsor to further refine the scope of the bill before any Floor Action is scheduled.
•We owe it to you to make sure you understand the significance of this legislation. In its current form, the bill essentially wipes out the renewable standard. At a time when states around the country are increasing their renewable standards, this bill would make Washington the first and only state to rollback its clean energy requirements.
HOUSE COMMITTEE ACTION
HB 1747: Reducing climate pollution in the built environment (a.k.a. Efficiency First; Rep. Christine Rolfes, Prime Sponsor).
Ways & Means Committee: Possible Executive Session.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Supported by AIA Washington, many individual Architects and other
businesses around the Sate, this job creator will assert Washington’s
regional and national clean-energy leadership by putting efficiency
first by promoting super-efficient, low-energy-use buildings.
•Successful
negotiations to address concerns of business are ongoing and language
is being drafted for new striker to reflect many of those concerns.
2SHB 1165: Providing safe collection and disposal of unwanted drugs from residential sources.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Reduces risks of accidental poisonings, drug diversion, and contamination of surface and ground water by requiring drug producers to provide residents with a secure and convenient statewide program for disposing unwanted and left-over prescriptions and over-the-counter medicines.
•Budget-neutral to the State. The drug producers set up and pay for
the program, and the Board of Pharmacy provides oversight to ensure
security. A fee paid by the producers recovers agency oversight costs.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Washington is losing its farmland at a fast and alarming rate - two
Clark Counties or nearly one Walla Walla County, that’s how much
agricultural land WA lost in the last 10 years.
•This bill creates a voluntary tool to better focus growth in the central Puget Sound’s urban areas while permanently protecting the region’s rural and resource land from encroaching development. It’s based on the consensus of a two-year stakeholder process.
SHB 1180: Regarding the use of bisphenol A.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•The Safe Baby Bottle bill (SHB 1180) protects children's health by banning the toxic chemical—bisphenol A (BPA)—in baby bottles, sippy cups and other food containers kids use.
•Wal-Mart, Toys ‘R’ Us, Whole Foods, and Safeway Stores have
announced that they will stop stocking BPA containing products for
babies. Nalgene, Camelbak, and Playtex and others have announced that
they will stop making products with BPA. A small investment in
prevention will help protect children's health and the environment for
the future.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Requires oil companies and other shippers to maintain an oil spill response tug at Neah Bay.
•Will save taxpayers $3.6 million per year beginning in 2010.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Creates a producer-provided recycling program for CFLs and
other mercury-containing lights from residents, small businesses and
small school districts. The program will properly handle the mercury
while also bolstering consumer confidence in using energy-efficient
lights that reduce greenhouse gases.
•Budget-neutral to the state. A fee paid by producers of mercury-containing lights recovers agency oversight costs.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Adjudication is a critical tool to understand how much water is
actually used in a basin and the amount of water available.
Unfortunately, only a small fraction of water rights in Washington have
been adjudicated, leaving the state unable to adequately manage its
rivers and streams.
•This bill allows Ecology to initiate limited adjudications and streamlines the adjudication process to promote efficiency and provide certainty for water users.
HB 1653: Clarifying the integration of the shoreline management act policies with the growth management act.
POSITION: SUPPORT the Simpson Substitute.
•WA State Association of Counties, Association of WA Cities, WA Ports Association, environmental organizations, and the Departments of Ecology and CTED support this bill.
•The bill creates no new protections, it simply clarifies how and when existing protections apply on the state’s shorelands. This will eliminate the confusion caused by a Supreme Court decision from last fall.
HB 1967: Relating to prohibiting urban growth area expansions in one hundred year floodplains.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Two years ago, flooding caused over $1 billion damage to the state. Last year we also saw extreme flood events from Skagit to Lewis Counties, threatening lives and property and damaging the environment.
•With limited exceptions, this bill will prohibit further
urbanization of Western Washington’s floodplains. This will prevent
future communities from being put in harm’s way and reduce the costs to
the state and taxpayers.
SENATE COMMITTEE ACTION
SSB 5687: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through land use and transportation requirements (a.k.a. Transit Oriented Communities; Sen. Chris Marr, Prime Sponsor).
Ways & Means Committee: Possible Executive Session
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Washington state cannot afford to grow in the same costly, sprawling, business as usual way. This bill will help to avoid the need to invest huge sums of taxpayer dollars in unnecessary infrastructure expansions to pave over the state’s rural and resource lands.
•The Transit-Oriented Communities bill incorporates climate
change consideration into land use and transportation planning, helping
to increase transportation choices, reduce traffic congestion, save
taxpayer dollars, and significantly lessen the state's greenhouse gas
emissions. The bill has no immediate fiscal impact to the state.
SB 5854: Reducing climate pollution in the built environment (a.k.a. Efficiency First; Sen. Derek Kilmer, Prime Sponsor).
Ways & Means Committee: Public Hearing and Possible Executive Session
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Supported by AIA Washington, many individual Architects and other businesses around the Sate, this job creator will assert Washington’s regional and national clean-energy leadership by putting efficiency first by promoting super-efficient, low-energy-use buildings.
•Successful negotiations to address concerns of business are ongoing and language is being drafted for new striker to reflect many of those concerns.
SB 6096: Concerning the taxation of the manufacturing and selling of fuel for consumption outside the waters of the United States by vessels in foreign commerce.
Ways & Means Committee: Public Hearing and Executive Session
POSITION: SUPPORT
•The state faces an $8 billion budget deficit and cannot afford an additional $15-20 million a year in tax breaks to big oil.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Washington is losing its farmland at a fast and alarming rate - two Clark Counties or nearly one Walla Walla County, that’s how much agricultural land WA lost in the last 10 years.
•This bill creates a voluntary tool to better focus growth in the central Puget Sound’s urban areas while permanently protecting the region’s rural and resource land from encroaching development. It’s based on the consensus of a two-year stakeholder process.
SB 5280: Recognizing conservation achieved in excess of biennial conservation targets as an eligible renewable resource under chapter 19.285 RCW, the energy independence act.
POSITION: OPPOSE
•In a nutshell, we need to do as much energy conservation as we
can and develop as many new, clean renewable energy sources as we can.
This bill would allow utilities to forgo the development of new
renewable resources by doing more energy conservation instead. The
underlying law, however, already requires utilities to achieve all cost
effective conservation.
•The renewable and conservation standards were designed to work together to cover long-term forecasts of increased electricity needs. Blending the renewable and conservation standards could reduce the development of new renewables by 505-570 aMW by 2025, leaving open the potential for getting at least a portion of that energy from environmentally harmful sources instead of clean renewables.
SB 5344: Requiring a rescue tug at Neah Bay.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Requires oil companies and other shippers to maintain an oil spill response tug at Neah Bay.
•Will save taxpayers $3.6 million per year beginning in 2010.
SSB 5533: Regarding the adjudication of water rights.
POSITION: SUPPORT
•Adjudication is a critical tool to understand how much water is
actually used in a basin and the amount of water available.
Unfortunately, only a small fraction of water rights in Washington have
been adjudicated, leaving the state unable to adequately manage its
rivers and streams.
•This bill allows Ecology to initiate limited adjudications and
streamlines the adjudication process to promote efficiency and provide
certainty for water users.
SB 5806: Concerning solid waste for the purposes of defining a renewable resource.
POSITION: OPPOSE
•This bill would allow garbage incinerators and other
waste-to-energy facilities to be considered as renewable energy sources
under the Clean Energy Initiative—937.
•Although technology is improving, these facilities still
release toxic pollution including dioxins, contribute to global climate
change, and compete with recycling and reduction programs. Proponents
of new waste-to-energy technologies like gasification, pyrolysis, and
plasma arc, claim they are safe, but unfortunately the same problems
remain.
SSB 5840: Modifying the energy independence act.
POSITION: OPPOSE
•In its current form, the bill severely weakens I-937, the
Clean Energy Act, by including current provisions capping development
at load growth, grandfathering in existing resources to count as
eligible renewables, and allowing conservation to substitute for
renewable resources. Such amendments essentially eliminate all of the
new renewables that would have been produced through the citizens
initiative.
•The environmental community looks forward to
continuing to work with stakeholders and the Prime Sponsor to further
refine the scope of the bill before any Floor Action is scheduled.
SB 6083: Consolidating the Growth Management Hearings Boards.
POSITION: OPPOSE
•The state has three hearings boards, Eastern, Western and
Central, so that the different regions of the state and their different
concerns can be considered when implementing the Growth Management Act.
Consolidating the Boards into a single board based in Olympia will take
away this regional perspective.
